Death is for Suckers
by Sara Gein
Summary: A cybernetically enhanced troll finds himself in the wrong place at the right time. This is a story adapted from one of my games, and features characters and descriptions created by the GM, CGL, as well as myself. Enjoy!


Death is for Suckers

S.K. O'Malley

1.

The streets of were dim, laden with smog and the infamous Tacoma Aroma. Close to the Puyallup district border, a lean troll in a sleeveless blue long-coat, white t-shirt, baggy cargos, and heavy black boots ambled through the autumn rain with his hands in his pockets. Sidewalks, puddles, and carpets of crunchy yellow and red leaves lined the little Mexican town he was in. Faint Mariachi music played from speakers atop the Mercado Mexicano grocery store, chirping rang out from the neighboring Pancho Villa Casino, and the line of last-callers trickled out of the nameless bar across the street. Ahote didn't pay them much attention as he strolled by, rain trickling down the back of his collar and dampening his stiff pink mohawk.

A single Jackrabbit roared down the street, hydroplaning off onto the sidewalk, splashing Ahote along the way. At the base of a strange Azteca styled totem pole was a gang of six orks in stereotypical cholo clothing, throwing up gang signs and sporting obnoxious holograms. That kind of display would earn a curb stomping real gangs like the Halloweeners or Ragers. They started calling out in butchered Nahuatl to Ahote, he ignored them and kept his eyes laser focused on the den of dehydrated delicacies; the green and white panelled Stuffer Shack on the corner.

He stepped into the lot, bathed in the cold hue of buzzing fluorescent lights overhead. Xenon seeped through the ad-coated glass into the parking lot. His augmented reality overlay auto-synced on proximity to the local host, and began flaring bright, day-glo ads that overlapped, drowning each other out.

A Mercury Comet driven by a withered looking working girl was parked beneath a SunCell awning at one of the several charging stations. She tapped her six-inch heel like a nervous rabbit next to the charging station as she stared across the lot to the only other vehicle being charged, a Toyota Gopher owned by a black man in jeans and red hoodie with a white Catholic cross imprinted on the back. Upon looking back at the woman and seeing her ears ended in points did he realize her discomfort; any metahuman knew to recognize the Humanis logo from a kilometer away, and he was quick to step inside away from him. The automated door didn't slide thanks to a faulty sensor, and he had to manually pull it open to gain entrance.

Ahote stepped into the cool interior to be greeted by a low muzak loop and generic AR greeting card. Directly in front of him was the green panelled checkout counter. Behind it stood a familiar face, a lanky human named Vern working the register. He looked like a college kid who spent more time drinking soy-cafe than he did sleeping, and had a voice like he was still waiting for his second ball to drop. He watched over a barcode scanner, cash register, data-terminal, credstick receptor, and a PanicButton, all behind a plexiglass safety barrier.

Ahote was flanked by a pocket of simsense arcade games. There were four different games: "Little Mutant Vik Ninja Cyberboy! 3", "Orbital Ninja Death Commando 5", "The All-New Ultimate Bike Race Ninja Street Duel," and "Street Fighting Magical Ninja 8." Each was 1¥ per minute of play—just slot a credstik and put on the 'trodes. One of which was in use by an emaciated ork teenager who looked like she found a way to trip the credstick scanner and play without limit. It didn't look like Vern noticed or if he did he didn't care. When he rounded the counter corner, he noticed that behind Vern sat Veronica, his cute blonde dwarf girlfriend, wiping down the store's Remington-990 shotgun. Ahote considered strolling over and seeing if he could best his Cyberboy score, but he had greater priorities. Instead, he sauntered on towards the rows of identical, gunmetal aisles that made up the core of the shack.

"Christ man, don't you ever sleep?" Vern said with his nose buried in a holo-zine running on his tablet.

"Not on an empty stomach," Ahote replied while stepping up to the glass face of the microwave. "The grill still running?"

Vern chuckled.

"Yes, the 'grill' is still running," he said with a smirk, then closed his tablet. "Babe, mind watching the counter for a sec'? I need to get the village troll his tribute before he eats us all."

Ahote let out a single laugh.

"I wouldn't worry about that. You ain't got no meat, and Veronica's a kid's meal."

She let out a snort in an attempt to keep from laughing.

Vern set down the tablet and slid his employee key-card to unlock the heavy steel door separating the checkout counter from the neighboring electronics corner. He strolled past glass walls over a locked display of cheap electronics such as personal computers, low-end CD and chip players, data readers and portable simsense rigs. Neon green frames hugged the display windows, and bright day-glo panels displayed on the glass, ready for interaction. Sadly the smudging and grime of thousands of fingerprints, worked over with cheap, ineffective cleaning wipes, made it hard to detect input beneath all the muck. Opposite the floor-to-ceiling, spring green dividing wall was the food section. The dispenser bars for liquid and viscous products such as Shmoozies, Snorkels, Shakeups, Soykaf, Fizzygoo and so on were present on tables coated in some sticky sludge. It also featured Ludivenko Lovely Soya-Sloppies with the DoubleThick option: The Cook-It-Your-Self microwave, the rotating pizza display machine, the Synthmeat "Hot Dog" dispenser and the Soy Patty Yummy Burger Grill-O-Matic took up the right end of the U-shaped enclave. The table offered plates, cups, napkins, plastic knives and plastic sporks, although it was in dire need of a refill, as there was only a single spork left for Ahote, and no plates or cups.

"Hey uh, Vern," he began while looking over the empty utensil holes. "You uh...you got some more stuff in the back?"

"Hm?" he let out while leaning over from the Grill-O-Matic. "Yeah...Hey, it looks like the patties here need to be swapped out," he said while taking off his lanyard and handing it to Ahote. "Mind grabbing the things from the back, and some new patties, while I clean this up?"

"Null sweat," he replied while taking the thin nylon strand in his massive, meaty palm.

Vern took out a few wet-naps from the cabinet beneath the grill and began working over the metal grate as Ahote swaggered back around to the electronics section, and down the hall between it and the checkout towards the employee lounge. The eye rending colors and lights gave way to muted greys with industrial yellow guidelines for loading androids, and a sectioned off area was framed in black synthleather couches around a large flat-vid screen. Right of the lounge space was a bathroom door and an old Roman numeral clock, and he stopped to wonder if anyone else could actually read the strange arrangements of Xs and Is but him. He followed the yellow lines towards the arrangement of storage shelves, stocked with store surplus, replacement materials, and some basic utility items for emergencies, like munitions for the shotgun or first-aid kits for injured customers. Another PanicButton was on the wall, the size of the clock face from before instead of the usual coin size. He almost bumped into it when reaching up for the cardboard boxes of utensils.

"Vern!" echoed down from the lounge, causing Ahote to turn and see Veronica standing there in her Stuffer Shack green polo and blue jeans. "Would you...oh hey," her eyes widened for a second when she saw Ahote. "Sorry, I saw Vern's card was swiped and thought he was here," she stepped closer, into the stock area, and looked around some more. "Did he...did he just give you his card and ask you to get stuff?"

"Mhm. Utensils need restocking, and he's cleaning the grill."

"Are you…" she rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger, shaking her head as she did so. "That's not something he's supposed to do, just...give out his card like that. And asking a customer to get stuff? Fraggin'...Vern!"

"I don't mind helping you guys out," he said with a shrug. "You need something too?"

She sighed.

"Yeah, I need more...whatever that stuff is he has me wipe the shotgun down with. I'm dry and only half way through."

"Hmm...yeah, yeah sure," he said while placing the utensil boxes down and looking around for the gun oil.

A few rows back and on the second shelf he found it, lumped in with the cleaning goods. They truly do have everything at the Shack.

"Here y'go," he said while tossing it to her.

"Thanks," she hissed back. "I still can't believe...if our boss knew he was getting help from customers…"

"Hey, Veronica, it really isn't a problem," he said with a slight smile. "I don't mind helping out, making things a bit easier on you guys. Besides, Vern's got a lot on his plate, don't he? With class and all that?"

"Heh, sure. Guy isn't taking any classes this semester, you know, and I'm more worried about getting fired over some dumb technicality than I am how you feel about helping, no offense."

"None taken," he said while lifting the boxes again. "I get it. I-"

He was cut off by the sudden rising wail of an infant from the main section of the store.

"Oh, sounds like we have a brat," Veronica let out with a beleaguered sigh. "Thanks, Ahote. I need to get back to the counter."

Ahote nodded and followed close behind with the boxes. She returned to the cashier stand to resume cleaning, and Ahote paused for a second at the bizarre sight of two humans making out in aisle seven. One was a man in white leather leggings, a sleeveless shirt, and fringed vest, like something seen in a rock royalty video. His girlfriend was in a black catsuit with heels, too many zippers, and wrapped in looping chains, all under a hefty, heavily patched and studded jacket. She kept his back against the aisle, and reached for cat food to stuff into the pockets of her jacket as they locked lips. His first thought was 'why weren't they doing this in the wash behind the store?' and his second was 'they better plan on paying for those,' as mental images of Veronica firing the Remington formed in his mind. He sauntered over to Vern in the food section with a smile, quietly chuckling to himself along the way.

"What're you laughing at?" Vern asked as he took the utensil boxes.

"Nothing, really," he put a thumb over his shoulder. "Hey, you know there's two rocker-kids swapping spit in the aisle seven, right?"

"Hm? Oh yeah, Jake and Angie...they're harmless; old high school buddies of mine."

"Really? Alright. They usually get cans of cat-food?"

"Yeah, Angie loves her cat. I remember seeing it at her place a few times during parties."

"You've actually partied with them before?"

Vern shrugged while finishing up the utensil restock, and moving on to load in new patties.

"Well, I've done catering. They've called in and ordered pizzas before, and Jake sometimes pays me in beer."

"Drek, man," he shook his head, wondering if Vern had ever actually been invited to a party; he knew the answer was probably 'no'. "Oh uh...Veronica asked me to get her some gun grease."

"Alright, nice. That gun hasn't been cleaned in...two weeks I think."

"Yeah uh…" he looked back towards the checkout to see Veronica listening to an elven woman in black leggings and a blue jacket. "You know, Veronica wasn't too happy about that. You giving me your card, I mean."

"Hm? Why not?" he said as he closed and started the grill. "These'll be done in five, by the way."

"Thanks, chummer. But uh...she doesn't like you asking the clients for help. I don't know how your job goes, but I think you could probably get in trouble for giving me your access pass."

"Oh that. Yeah, if the district manager came in I'd be in trouble, but I'm always given a heads up before he comes in. Won't be a problem."

"Vern," he said, placing a large palm on his shoulder. "Let me put it this way. Your girlfriend looked pretty worried about you doing it. If you want to keep your bed warm at night, you might want to change what you doing."

He nodded as he bit his lower lip.

"Alright, I get it. You still got the key?"

Ahote held up the lanyard for him to take.

"Thanks, Ahote. I uh...hold on," he looked off into space and put a finger on his ear. He didn't have an earpiece, but it was how most people showed they were getting a neural call without just blowing off whoever they were talking too. "Dammit...so apparently someone is sampling the ice cream."

"I'll deal with it," Ahote said, sounding tired now.

"Thanks, chummer," he replied while nervously scratching his neck.

"Don't mention it," he turned to leave, although stopped and turned back. "Seriously, don't. You don't get help from the clients anymore."

Cold goods framed by spring green light strips flanked his left, and his right by jam-packed with plasti-packed fruit dishes and vegetables that are gamma-ray treated to prevent spoilage. There were small radiation wrappers on the packaging that gave him pause, but he shook his head and moved on by shelves of flour, raw nutrisoy and flavor additives, krill filler, textured vegetable protein, dextroand levo-sugars and sugar substitutes on his way to the frozen goods wall opposite the checkout. There he saw a man in jeans and a plaid hoodie hunched over, peeling the lids of tubs of ice cream to sample the contents, then slide them back into place.

"Hey, drekhead," Ahote called to him, causing him to almost leap out of his skin and drop an opened container of strawberry to the floor. "Looks like you're buying a lot of ice cream tonight."

"I uh...erm...I... " the man stumbled over his words as Ahote lumbered closer.

He grabbed him by the collar and put him up against the glass of the freezer, carefully looking over his shoulder, attempting to tell which lids have been peeled off. A few were obvious, although he wanted to be sure.

"So how many of these are you taking out the door with you?"

"I...please...I only need one, sir," he murmured.

"Looks like you sampled more than one," Ahote hissed. "Make it easier for us and just pick them out for me."

"I...I only need one, sir."

Ahote pulled him back, then slammed him back into the freezer, shaking the glass and sending reverberations down the wall. A few of the overhead lights flickered, and a feminine voice yelped out from around aisle seven.

"Try again."

"I...I'm sorry. I can only get one! I don't have the money! I just...my wife just wanted one, she made me, and I can barely get that!"

"Pick. Them. Out."

The mad nodded, slowly turning red and closing his eyes as he tried to turn away from Ahote.

"Well, uh...that one, and...hm…" he strained his neck turning to see the containers and gasped for air between words.

After about five minute, Ahote dropped the bum and let him shuffle up to the front desk with almost twelve white tubs in his arms. He mumbled to himself as he dropped them there for Vern, who regarded them with a look of surprise.

"Uh...buying in bulk?" Vern asked while putting on a slight smirk.

"Covering damages," Ahote said before the man could say anything. "This is all the drek he contaminated. Which he is more than willing to pay for, right?"

The bum nodded and took out a red strip of plastic from his coat pocket, then handed it over to Vern.

"It's all I have, I swear. I'm sorry, just...please…"

Vern sighed.

"Get out."

"W-what?" he whimpered.

"Get out. I'll say this covers your damage, and let you go with both your legs un-broken."

The bum nodded, turned, and bolted out into the sleet without a moment's hesitation. Ahote's eyes followed him out, then turned back to Vern with brows elevated.

"Damn, chummer. You turn tough guy?" Ahote chuckled.

"Well," he shrugged. "It helps when I have my own troll muscle, y'know?"

"Hmph!" he grunted while displaying his pale-yellow teeth. "You oughta start payin' me for this drek."

"Well, get a real SIN, and you'll get a job!" he chuckled. "Anyway, I need to take care of that mess myself; that whole aisle probably needs to be purged for health reasons now," he lowered his head and shook it while grumbling to himself. "All that stock, down the tube…"

"Hey uh...why don't I make a donation on the way out?"

"Nah, thanks though. Donations have to go through corporate."

"Hey, I came in for some food after all, might pick up some sodas, and who's to say I can't leave a tip?"

Vern chuckled.

"Fine, fine. See what you want, then come back here. Be quick, I should get on the ice cream aisle quick."

Ahote jandered back up to aisle seventeen, driven by the sudden desire for citrus. He stepped into a yellow-marked section and looked over the warning labels for their packaged contents. Beneath all the 'gamma-treated' disclaimers, he finally found something that looked like arcology grown orange slices. Dried, pale yellow slices of clementines looked alright to him, and he reached out for two.

A thunderous howl tore through the Shack, causing the ballistic glass of the checkout window, front windows, and even cold-goods display doors to be whipped and flown around into piles in the back of the store. Ahote heard only ringing after the first pop of thunder, although he could see every container burst, tear, and pop with the force. Meats, plastics, powders, liquids, and gamma-treated produce of numerous consistencies and colors flew threw the air alongside dust, rubble, polystyrene shreds, and plascrete bits. He felt the floor rumble under him, and he stumbled back into the shattered cold goods doors, although the sharp bits remaining in the frame did little more than scrape his Orthoskin.

The sharp ringing in Ahote's ears gave way to a low, ashy voice. It's specific forms weren't apparent to him at first, just that it was there. After a few second of shaking his head and taking deep breaths to ease the aching in his lungs, he began to make words from the meaningless sound.

"-want. Just remain calm, and you'll be fine."

"Move it! You heard him!" a second, deeper voice came, tinted with the low grumbling of either an ork or troll.

"Oh-ok! Just please don't hurt me!" a young, feminine voice came next.

"Please, help me," another, matured female voice whispered. "They're here for me."

Ahote realized the whispering was aimed at him, at least it sounded like it, and he looked around the still-settling cloud of dust and grime. He saw to his left the elven mother from before, crouched down with her baby's head pressed into her bosom in an attempt to muffle the cries.

"Wha...what? What's going on?" he grunted as he pulled himself from the door frame.

"Didn't you just fraggin' hear them?!"

"No, actually. My ears were still ringing," he deadpanned while shooting her a sarcastic 'bitch please' look.

"Frag it...they came in, said they wanted 'the woman and her kid'. Please, you...you look like you could help. Tough guy, right? I know the type," she spoke quickly, her words barely separated by rests. "I'm Brandeen. Please...help."

Ahote nodded without a word, and took a knee at the edge of the aisle. As carefully as he could, he peeked around the corner through the cloud. He saw two ork boys, wrapped in leather, too many chains, and covered in tattoos. One had a yerzed-out cybernetic arm with a gold and purple case mod. The pair of them kicked over wreckage, turned over trash, and looked around corners, mostly for the sake of knocking things down it looked like. They waved AK-97 assault rifles in Jake and Angie's faces, forcing them to their knees against the checkout. He couldn't see Vern or Veronica. The cloud was thicker by the front, although he could see the front wall and window frames imploded, as well as the utter demolishment of the arcade section. Bright orange flames pierced the grey cloud, and a thick plume of black went up into it. With a little focus, a flexing of some muscle behind his eyes, Ahote's vision shifted from chromatic to thermal, and he saw the sea of grey and rainbow ruin shift to a gradient of heat. A third marker appeared to him behind the shelves, faint and yellow, but barely visible, and roughly the size of the dwarf. He looked over to the checkout and desperately searched for Vern and Veronica, although he only saw what appeared to be a second, faint marker of a dwarf. If Vern was there, Ahote couldn't see him.

"Where are they, man?" one of the orks asked when looking back towards the unknown dwarf. "You said they'd be here; they better be here."

"They'll be here, numb-nuts. Just do your job."

"Man, we need to slot 'n run, omae," the other ork said. "Joeby already fragged us, we need...we need…"

"Look, drek's gone terminal thanks to you two screw-heads. We do this now."

Ahote flexed his secondary ocular muscle again, shifting his vision back to normal. He turned back to the lady to check if she was still there. She wiped away puddles in her eyes before they became tears with one hand while holding the infant with the other, bouncing it on her thigh while shushing it softly.

"Alright lady, sit tight," he said before dashing forward.

He crossed the open lane of the Shack, over to the despoiled drink sector painted over with a multi-color mess. Ahote tried to keep low, crouched, although his attempt at minimizing his profile turned into a slip and stumble as his boots tread the quagmire covered floor. He fell on all fours before sliding along soda syrup and icee slush, and he only stopped when bashing his crown against the section counter. He fell onto his side, held his throbbing head, but kept his ears tuned for any sounds that would indicate trouble coming his way. So far it just sounded like that Jake guy was mouthing off to the orks, telling them not to be so rough or to get their hands off his girl. It sounded like he protested his credstick getting lifted, then a long stretch of automatic gunfire ended both his whining and what sounded like Angie's subsequent screams.

"Fraggin' kids…" one of the orks hissed. "They need to learn when to shut the hell up."

"Ghost, Crank," the cybered up ork replied. "Save the ammo, can ya'?"

"Both of you shut it. Find them, then we split. Ghost, how hard is that?"

"Surprisingly, with this idiot almost-"

"Don't start!" The dwarf snapped. "Do your damn job, or Vic'll have our kneecaps! You'll be lucky if you have a brother by the end of this."

"Don't say that, man!"

Ahote listened to their back and forth, more about 'doing the damn job before something bad happens'. They sounded like a gaggle of idiots. He didn't have long before the dust settled, and he crept around the dividing counter to the hall, then behind the checkout. There he saw Vern on his side bleeding from some kind of head wound with a large bit of plascreet laying next to him. Veronica was curled up, murmuring to herself, and didn't seem to register Ahote's presence. He tried whispering her name, waving a hand in front of her face, yet she remained utterly impassive to him. Thankfully, the Remington 990 was there beneath the counter, still smelling of gun grease.

Shells were loaded, the safety was switched off, and Ahote stood up to look over the counter at the pair of orks and their dwarf friend. The dwarf matched their ganger appearance, although he seemed to have a bandolier of filth across his chest, displaying feathers, chicken bones, talismans, and dreamcatchers. He knew what that looked like, and he knew to geek the mage first. Ahote levelled the shotgun as he gained the attention of the other two, then squeezed the trigger. A buckshot spread tore through the air, into the dwarf's face, causing him to scream and collapse with his palms over his damaged visage. The orks dove in different directions as Ahote ducked back down, anticipating the incoming burst that followed a mere second later.

Ahote kept low as he sidestepped out into the hall, checking for one of the two ork boys. The one without the cyberarm was on his side, rifle aimed squarely up at where Ahote once stood, and he only noticed him peeking around the corner with the 990 the second before the trigger was pulled. Pellets spat forth, ripping into the neck and collar bone of the ork, causing his head to jerk back violently with a loud snapping sound. Blood trickled up from between his lips with an inaudible gurgling, then he seemed to go limp. Ahote pulled back the pump, expelling the spent shell, then pushed it up to load the next shell. He took a stand a few steps back, took aim, and met the combined forces of automatic fire and something...else. The bullets were of little concern, most of which only bruised his hide while a few managed to get imbedded in his epidermis. What really shook Ahote, and even caused him to collapse onto his back, was the ghostly wisp that resembled semi-transparent ectoplasm as it bolted through the air just slower than a bullet. He fell back, clutched his chest for the invisible icy hook that was digging through his sternum into his internal organs, then discovered there was nothing there but the bruise of where he was hit. He felt something sticky pooling up and couched it out, then saw a small splatter of red on the damaged floor.

"Drek…" he hissed to himself. "Hey, Veronica?" he said as he turned to the blonde dwarf. "Please tell me you can hear me."

"Crank! Talk to me!" he heard the dwarf assailant shout.

"Veronica?" he repeated giving her a nudge.

She winced, yelped a little, although it sounded like the goons were more focused on this 'Crank' guy. Ahote needed to hurry, he knew it, and he reached out for Veronica's hand. She jumped a little, although finally seemed to register Ahote's appearance when she looked at him with doe-eyes.

"Come on, we need to get you outta here," he whispered as he began pulling her along behind him, staying low on route to the storage area.

Veronica didn't say anything, she didn't protest either as she was pulled out into the aisle. Ahote looked back just in time to see the augmented ork raising his rifle from around the wreckage of the first four aisles, He lifted the Remington and, to the best of his ability with a single hand, discharged another shell in his direction, seemingly striking him where the chrome shoulder met his meat. It was enough to send him down into the strewn about carnage, cursing the whole way down. The scent of gunsmoke and sweat became stronger, at least more noticeable, when he pulled her over to the back door. Veronica stood there, impassive still, despite Ahote trying to get her attention. He looked back to see if either the ork or dwarf were following, and blindly fumbled around Veronica's neck for her lanyard to open the door to the back.

The lounge room became visible, and Ahote quickly rushed through, almost dragging Veronica behind him. He stopped by the bathroom, considering keeping her in there, then turned towards the storage shelves to see the loading door in the back. He gave her another tug and led her to the back. As he began pushing open the back door, he looked back to check for any followers. This time he caught the bloody-faced dwarf blowing down the door with some massive rush or fire, then storming in after Ahote.

"Hey! Don't run ya' fraggin' son of-"

Ahote fired off another shot towards him, this time knocking him onto his back. He finished pushing the door open and turned back to Veronica before the smoke finished rising from the barrel.

"Move. Get somewhere safe. Call me when you do," he said to her as he pushed her out into the sleet. "Can you hear me? Veronica!"

She nodded.

"Y-yeah...I can. I hear you," she mumbled.

"What did I say?"

"Leave, call you…"

Her words were cut off by another ghostly wisp slamming into Ahote's side, causing him to accidentally drag her to the floor. He rolled onto his back, pointed the barrel towards the standing dwarf, then let out a shot into his chest. Half of the spread caught some of the cardboard boxes on the shelves, but the other half floored the dwarf. Veronica ran off, Ahote stood, then he shuffled over while clutching his gut to check the body. It looked like a few pellets hit his corroded, one took out an eye, and if the dwarf wasn't already dead, he sure looked like it.

A shrill scream summoned Ahote from the back, and the aisles shook as he thundered his way back to Brandeen. As he slid on his heels out into the main walkway of the store, he saw the augmented ork about the round the back aisle. With a quick motion, Ahote raised the barrel and fired off quick from the hip. He mostly menaced the debris around that section of the store, although a few pellets to the back of his heavy jacket and scrapes on his cyberarm drew his attention. The ork turned, snarling, and Ahote could see the meeting space between his chrome and meet was red, bleeding, and likely in searing agony.

"Frag you!" he shouted while opening fire with his assault rifle.

Ahote walked into the bullets, confident that his Orthoskin, troll epidermis, and plated bones would be able to take the shock. He fired off a slug at the ork, striking his sternum and causing him to recoil. The ork's grip slipped, and he turned from a concentrated spraying to a recoil dominated praying. Stray shots still struck Ahote's hide, however more of them struck the ceiling or the shelves than him. There was another pump, an expelled shell, then another ear-splitting roar from the barrel of the 990 that struck the ork in the abdomen, forcing him down onto the floor. The automatic fire stopped when the ork dropped his rifle, giving Ahote enough of a window to stomp over, and empty another shell at point blank range into the ork's nose, reducing his head to a pulpy mass of gore and grey-matter amidst the existing muck and slush. Then a total silence fell over the Shack, leaving Ahote to realize how many of the bullets succeeded in piercing his orthoskin.

"Oh...oh ghost," Brandeen's voice came from beside him, still in the same place he last saw her. "Is that...are they gone?"

Ahote nodded.

"Yeah. That's all of 'em," he turned and began shambling over to her, to which she recoiled slightly and held her babe tighter.

"Ok," she let out with a rapid nod. "Ok...thank you. Uh...I uh…"

She still looked on edge. Like even Ahote could have been after her. It was the kind of look of someone who knew they were in trouble, and she kept it after the three were dead. It told him there was more than those three.

"There's more where that come from, hm?"

She continued nodding. Ahote wondered if she would break her own neck that way. Questions formed in his mind, although each was blown aside by the sudden sound of sirens in the distance.

"Drek," he said while holding his hand out for Brandeen. "Come on, we need to split before the fuzz gets here."

2.

He didn't give her time to respond before taking her by the arm and pulling her to her feet. Ahote quickly jogged out passed the demolished checkout and arcade, he knew DocWagon would be here quick for Vern, and then stopped in the parking lot.

"You got a ride?" he asked.

Brandeen cocked her head over to the smouldering, charred ruins of some Jackrabbit car. _Drek_. Alright, he turned to look around some more, thinking of options. He knew if one didn't appear, they would have to hoof it south into Puyallup; maybe going along the Puyallup River would help them dodge Johnny Law and his checkpoints. He looked up the main road towards Little Seoul to see the faint hues of red and blue flickering in the distance, and slowly drew closer. As he turned towards the wash behind the store, a narrow stretch going into the Puyallup river, his attention was drawn to a white 2072 model step-van by the violent flinging open of the doors and pained shouts of another ork in ganger chic.

"Stooby!" he called, the first audible word of the bunch. "Where the frag are you?!" he added while stumbling out with an Ares Predator V in hand.

The ork seemed younger than the others, skinnier, in a trenchcoat and with short spiky black hair. Ahote noticed blood trickling down the side of his head, which may explain the stumbling and slurred speech. He pointed the gun at Ahote, who responded by remaining still and pushing Brandeen behind him. The ork kid turned to look at the ruins of the Stuffer Shack, mumbled something to himself too quiet to understand from several meters away, then his cheeks began to turn red. Ahote looked back at the store, then to him again, trying to piece together if he was in on it, or if he was mugged beforehand; the head wound made it hard to tell.

"Did you do this?" he whined while keeping his gun trained on Ahote.

"Whoa, hold on. Put the gun down, chummer," Ahote responded, holding up his free hand, palm out.

"DID YOU?!" he shouted. "DID YOU SHOOT MY BROTHER?!"

"That your bro in there? Listen kid, the guy tried geeking me; didn't leave me much choice."

The kid didn't say anything else, at least not that Ahote could hear over the gunshots. He moved quick when the first round fired, striking his bruised and battered epidermis, and quickly reached out to wrench the gun out of the kid's hand. With a single motion he pulled the Predator out of his grip by the slide, then brought it back across the ork's face. The thwacking sound lasted longer than the kid's composure did, and he quickly fell back against the white van.

"Alright kid, listen close," Ahote hissed while putting the still-warm barrel of the 990 to the kid's cheek. "We're getting out of here in that van, and you're coming with us. Answer our questions like a good little brat, and I won't put you in the ground with your brother."

The kid didn't say anything and just nodded in agreement. He let Ahote, Brandeen, and the baby in the back of the van, switched on the engine, and followed Ahote's directions into Puyallup. As they crossed the district border, the kid, whose name turned out to be Joeby, told Ahote of the false floor and the medical supplies inside. He took off his jacket and shirt, then let Brandeen get to work on his injuries. She was surprisingly adept at numbing the pain and treating the wounds, it's amazing what people can learn from the school of hard knocks.

"So...Joeby, right?" Ahote asked as Brandeen did her work with Cody asleep on the seat next to her.

"Yeah, that's me," he replied in a low, bitter tone.

"Mind explaining what happened back there? What your boys wanted with Brandy and her kid?"

"My son," Brandeen interjected as she held Cody to her bosom.

"Look, it was just a job, alright? Vic said it was our way out of Redmond. Nothin' personal."

"You wanted to kill me and my son," Brandeen added in a bitter tone matching Joeby's.

"And you geeked my brother, so blow me."

"Alright you two, hold on. Joeby, who's Vic? The halfer in there mentioned him too I think."

"He's uh...well...our boss. That's really it."

"Cut the drek, kid. You know what I mean."

Joeby nodded while keeping his foot on the pedal, going forward down the open road into Puyallup. Ahote kept an eye on the kid in case he tried anything funny, although it seemed Joeby was more worried about getting away from the pigs.

"He's mobbed up. Vic's a soldier for the Fratelli family, I think anyway."

"You think?" Ahote grunted as a twinge of pain shot out from a bullet trapped in his pectoral muscle.

"Yeah, I think. I'm pretty sure he's just a soldier, but he might be a uh...um...Capo! Or he could be about to get promoted. I'm not sure."

"But you know he's a part of the Fratelli family?"

Joeby nodded.

"Yeah, that much I know. Why? You uh...you ain't thinking of causing a ruckus with the boss, are you?"

"Thinking about it."

A silence consumed the van as it rattled along the road. Ahote knew Joeby didn't like the idea of him messing with Vic, he also knew Joe probably wanted him to try so he would end up dead; roundabout payback for his brother Stooby. Ahote spoke up again after a few seconds.

"So that job...your first run?"

"What's it to you?"

"Looked like you guys really, really scotched it. Your other trog buddy said you yourself did it."

Joeby sighed.

"I guess I did. I uh...I made that bomb. I placed it under Brandeen's car and we followed her for a bit. I was supposed to blow it along the way, but I couldn't do it."

"Gee, thanks," Brandeen hissed.

"Look bitch, my brother's dead because I decided not to just blow your hoop up. So cram it before I go back there and finish the job."

"So what happened next?" Ahote interjected quickly. "Looks like the bomb went off anyway."

"Yeah uh...I wasn't into blowin' up a kid,"

"My little boy," she hissed again.

"And then my brother hit me upside the head with his metal arm and took the detonator. Guy was desperate to get out, y'know?"

Ahote inclined his head an inch with a 'Mhm' grunt.

"Yeah, I get it."

"Fraggin' excuse me?" Brandeen spoke up. "You think that's worth geeking me and my son? What the hell, man?"

"You've been to Redmond, haven't you?" Ahote asked her.

"Yeah, I have; I'm a Barrens girl, as SINless as you guys."

"So you know what it's like being stuck there?" Joeby said from the front.

"Yeah, I do. The only reason I put up with people like Hampton was so I could get out."

"Well this is how we would've gotten out!" Joeby replied, his voice rising.

"Tough drek," she snapped back. "I'm a mom now. You're a bunch of ganger bums. Better you than me."

"Well ain't that about a bitch?" Ahote said. "It's a dog-eat-dog sprawl. Congratulations, you've seen the obvious. Now, Brandy, you know where we can take you and the kid while we figure out what to do next?"

Brandeen stopped working over Ahote's injuries and stood in the back of the van to look down at him.

"Cody. His name is Cody. He is my son. A 'kid' is the offspring of a goat. My son isn't a fragging animal, you got it?"

Ahote recoiled slightly at the steely tone in her voice. It was commanding, reminding him of his encounters with actual mercs. If that wasn't scary enough, her eyes looked like they were about to melt him, which given some of the work people can get in black clinics these days, wasn't too far from a possibility.

"Wiz. I got it, omae," Ahote nodded.

"And what about you, candy ass?"

"Sure, frag it," Joeby said dismissively.

"Good," she concluded, then sat back down and resumed treating Ahote. "We're almost at South Hill. Head west to Spanaway, Grey Town is a good place to lay low."

Joeby course corrected and began cruising towards this 'Grey Town' place. Along the way, Ahote's pocket began to vibrate. He reached in and withdrew his meta-link, the screen showed Veronica was calling. He slid the answer key and put the phone to his face.

"Hoi omae, you get somewhere?"

"Y-yes. Yes I did. I uh...I went to your flat."

"My place?"

"Yeah," she paused to take a deep breath. "I have the back-up key, remember? Figured...you're place was the safest place in the sprawl right now. I also really needed some nanohi."

"You got into my stash?"

"I only took four caps, that's all."

He shook his head.

"Alright well...yeah, the place is secure. You know where I keep my tools?"

"Sure do."

"Wiz. Listen, take one, and use it if something goes sideways. Then call me, alright?"

"You aren't coming back?"

"Nah, I got some biz' to take care of. I'll be back tomorrow, probably."

"Well, okay. Um...stay safe, alright?"

"No promises," he said, then ended the call.

Brandeen shook her head as Ahote put his commlink back into his pant pocket. It was a dumb line, but he enjoyed it.

Spanaway was an oasis of order in the Puyallup sea of madness. Dead hills of ash matted grass and withered black trees sat on rolling hills, and complexes of battered and grimy plascrete, metal, organiplastic, and brickwork. Each section was a dried corpse of what was once a suburban residential area, long since forlorn and rotten by time, grime, and volcanic ash. Gang tags attempted to add color, although ultimately gave way to new layers of ash in the wind and the acidic rain.

Grey Town was a large complex. Filled with not only several dozen husk homes, but also two obelisks of decay in the form of forlorn hotels. Joeby cruised through the 'streets' of Grey Town, moving slowly for the large crowd of street people to part. Rows of tents and shanties choked the alleys, roads, and homes, each of which hosted roughly thirty SINless packed in together in shared pools of filth. Ahote looked out of the windows to see a cornucopia of metahumanity on its knees, everyone was pale, sickly, and emaciated. Each had cheap vendingwear hanging on their tightly-wrapped, skeletal bodies; recycled plastic that is shredded and woven into fabric with an elastic band for pants, socks, and underwear. It came in steel grey, avocado green, or dirt brown. He had trouble telling who was simply sitting on the street and who was dead. Ahote saw an elvish woman rocking back and forth, arms and long hair shielding her child from the surrounding mob and burning sleet. When the woman collapsed, he realized she was simply a food source for her starving child.

"Take it personally, still?" Ahote muttered to Brandeen, who witnessed the same sight.

"Yeah, I still do. But...I understand," she replied softly, holding Cody to her bosom once more.

Joeby went up a few more blocks before Brandeen gave him the signal to stop. He pulled into the parking garage attached to one of the hotels, and they saw that not much parking went on with the expansive squats and hovels on each floor with more people than actual vehicles. She pat him on the shoulder to stop the van when the passed what appeared to be a pair of starves corpses in rags lined up against the overlook of the lot, mummified by the layered ash. Getting out and investigating revealed collapsed camping equipment, a cooler with a rancid interior that defied description, and a dead heater that Joeby said he might get running again. It was all shaken out and taken into the back of the van, then the van itself was parked at the top of a ramp in the middle of a floor near the top. The seats in the back were folded up to make room for the sleeping bags, the heater was indeed repairable and was placed in the passenger seat, and the salvaged tent fabric acted as a large flap that covered the windows along the front, with a smaller strip taken and hung over the windows on the back doors. When locked up tight, the van was something was a bolthole they could relax in.

"Alright," Ahote said, leaning against the wall of the van in a surprisingly comfortable nylon sleeping bag. "Now that we're out of dodge, mind telling me who might want you geeked?"

"What? You forget what I said on the way up?" Joeby said from the warmth of his own bag, propped up against the passenger seat where the heat came from.

"No, which is why I'm suspicious. This Vic guy...sounds like a middleman. If she was his problem, would he hire goons like you?"

Brandeen shook her head.

"You're right. I think Vic was just working for a man named George Hampton."

"Who?" Ahote and Joeby said in unison.

"He's a client of mine. Or, former client. I had Cody then quit the working-girl business. Since I was out of a job, I told him I'd tell his wife about his son if he didn't pay for me to get by and raise him. He's been paying me to keep quiet about Cody, stay out of his life, and well, we've been living alright in Tacoma up to now."

"So what changed?" Ahote asked.

"I don't know. I haven't been getting paid these last two months, and I was thinking of threatening to talk, but then these slitches showed up," she said while nodding over to Joeby.

"We were supposed to silence a liability, it sounds like," Joeby said, seemingly unfazed by her remark.

"Looks that way," Ahote added. "So this Hampton guy...should I know him? Sounds like he's mobbed up too."

"He's the V.P. at Alliance Designs. I heard they were opening up a new clinic in Snohomish and he was going to be in charge. My money's on him wanting to tie up all loose ends before he and his affairs come under a huge corporate microscope."

Ahote and Joeby nodded as she spoke.

"Think we should have a word with this guy?" Ahote asked.

"Maybe. If he isn't going to pay for his son anymore, for me, then I say we take what we can from him."

"Alright, how do we get to him?"

Brandeen shook her head.

"Vic will know how," Joeby spoke up. "He...uh...if Hampton was the client for this job, which is really sounds like he was, then Vic will know how to get in touch with him."

"Sounds like a great idea," Ahote said. "Now how do we know this isn't some backup you set up with Vic?"

Joeby shrugged.

"Honestly, you don't. But like you said, dog-eat-dog, and it looks like helping you guys is better for my health that staying on with Vic. We didn't kill Brandeen, so he'll probably kill me if he sees me again."

Ahote chuckled.

"Wiz. You think we could blow his hoop up?"

"Maybe, although I'm not a big fan of explosives; that was more Stooby's thing. I prefer a more subtle approach," he said while reaching over his shoulder and slapping the back of the driver's seat with his knuckles. "Got my own custom rig for it, too."

"You built a deck?" Brandeen asked.

"Sure did. Bootstrapped my way through the barrens with some stolen computer parts, programs, and recycled, outdated models. It's amazing what you can make when you put your mind to it, instead of going for the hot NERP on the shelf."

"Does Vic know what you can do?" Ahote asked.

"I dunno, probably. Really, my brother Stooby and his buddy Crank were the ones who Vic knew about. I just got roped into his plan since I was related. Don't really know how Fornis got involved...the shaman, I mean."

"Wiz. Maybe he won't see you coming if drek hits the fan."

"You mean when, Ahote?" Joeby replied with a smirk of his own.

Ahote chuckled.

"Where can we find this fragger?"

"Up in Snohomish. Vic and his posse are fans of McHugh's. He met me and the boys there."

"Usual spot?"

Joeby nodded.

"Alright. Can you use some of your wizardry now to get eyes on the place?" he asked while pulling himself out of his bag and going towards the driver's seat. "On the way, too. I need to pick up some working tools from home."

"Whoa, hold on," Brandeen began. "We should stay here a bit. Let the heat clear. After that mess at the Shack, pawns are gonna be crawling all over Tacoma. I doubt you wiped the cameras?"

Joeby shook his head, and sheepishly mumbled 'no'.

"Yeah, and this rust bucket doesn't look like it's spoofed, is it?"

Joeby repeated himself.

"So that means we're identifiable. Hampton and Vic probably know what happened already, and are pulling strings in Knight Errant to hunt us down. Leaving Grey Town is the last thing we want to do."

"Yeah, yeah…" Joeby added. "We should probably lay low for a while. A day or two at least."

Ahote paused, considered the options, then climbed back into the sleeping bag. Joeby and Brandeen were right, he knew it, although he didn't want to admit it. The pigs ran the city, putting down people who didn't conform with their correct way of living, or whoever their client asked. He also knew that Hampton probably ran the pigs. Ahote hated the idea that some suit in a corporate board room, some pencil neck who would never last in Puyallup or Redmond, being able to boss him around and run him up a tree. He hated being locked in a van with nothing to do but wait. He withdrew a crumpled up trode mesh from his pocket and carefully wrapped it around the sides of his head, plugged a longer strand of cord into his meta-link, and flipped into VR to kill time. He submerged into the vast digital sea that was the matrix, one fraught with storms and stuttering. Ahote attempted to load into his personal hub to relax, although was unable to move or even fully render the scene thanks to the poor connection in the district. After a loading failure led to the scene crashing and dumping him back to meatspace, he grumbled, put the trodes back into his pocket, and decided to flex his leg muscles.

The bandages over his wounds had just been changed that morning by Brandeen before he stepped out, and he felt an odd tingling as the cleaned bandages suddenly met the pollution of the air. Even in the middle of the day the sky was dark grey and the sleet was uncomfortably warm to the touch despite the near freezing air. He looked down from the garage to Grey Town to see the kind of squalor Brandeen came from. The same silver wrapped packet of nutrisoy paste was the subject of three unrelated stabbings. A fire erupted somehow from across town and the people just meandered out of the way until it burned itself out. People with sores and lesions across their skin vomited in the streets and spasmed on their sides. It looked like the only section of Grey Town with any measure of success was the strip along the main road where working girls competed for attention and clients. There was a gang of orks that looked similar to Stooby and Crank protecting the girls from weasel-faced SINless with jagged shanks and dull knives in exchange for a cut of their profits or free services.

"Bit of a mess, huh?" Brandeen said from beside Ahote, a grey, industrial respirator affixed to her face. "Here, you'll want this," she said while holding a circle of cloth with a bunch of clean tissues in on part.

"What's this?" he said while taking it and turning it over in his hands.

"A mask. I made it from a spare shirt and napkins. You pull it on and the napkins should act as a filter...kind of, anyway."

He nodded, pulled it over his head, and covered his mouth and tusks with the mask. The air already felt better through the varied layers of cloth.

"Thanks," he said once it was secured. "You uh...you from here, ain't ya'?"

"No," she shook her head. "I'm a Redmond girl. I got bought though, and my new pimp brought me out here," she had her arms crossed while looking out over Grey Town.

"You know what's wrong with these people? Half of them look sick as dogs."

"Oh yeah, the plague. We don't really have a name for it; as far as we know, it's not even a listed disease yet."

"Ghost...what the hell is it?"

"Imagine a malaria-tuberculosis double punch. It could just be both diseases at once, but I haven't seen or heard of anyone not showing both sets of symptoms, and no one's survived long term. I'm pretty sure it's something new."

"And no one knows about it? What the frag?"

"No one outside of Puyallup, no one who can do anything about it. That was one of the plans for Hampton," she said while pointing over to the street of working girls. "Corporate types comes here a lot, looking for some SINless tail, fire and forget so to speak. When girls start showing symptoms, they try and get work on the corner before they start losing their looks."

"So then if Hampton got the plague, he would force someone to look into it?"

She nodded.

"Wasn't my plan, though. My pimp wanted to infect me since I looked the best, I'd probably infect a lot of wealthy clients, but I knew it wouldn't work. Even if some suit got a cure made, it would be more profitable to treat the plague than to cure it, and we would be in the same situation here since inhibitors will cost a ton, and a cure probably won't even be public knowledge."

Ahote thought that sounded a bit cynical, then he remembered what happened with VITAS.

"So you left Puyallup next, huh?"

She nodded.

"Let Hampton knock me up so I could get the money out of him and leave. Sooner or later, my pimp would've forced me to get infected."

Ahote shuddered at that mental image, disgusting, violating, and he immediately fantasized about throwing her pimp from that overlook. He clenched his fist when looking down at the gangers guarding, and likely extorting, the women, and wondered how many of them were plague traps living on borrowed time. He knew Brandeen was right about medi-corps like DocWagon or EVO's Crash Cart controlling the disease instead of curing it, at least for anyone except their corporate backers, but he wondered if expensive inhibitors were better than nothing; at least it gave some people a chance.

"I suggest we lay-low in the van. I got lucky before, but I don't know how long our immune systems will keep us safe," she said while bouncing Cody lightly in her arms, wrapped in the closest approximation to a protective shawl she could make. " Let alone you guys," Brandeen said as she turned to head back to the van, then into virtual reality.

Ahote watched her enter, then decided to saunter over to a neighboring group of SINless squatters.

"Hey, you guys," Ahote said to them, causing them to recoil slightly. "You hungry, right? There's a Shack up on the border, Mexican town, got blown open," he shrugged. "Prolly some good food left there, feel me?"

One of the several doe-eyed skeletons nodded, looked at his pack, then the group shuffled off. They only spoke in mumbles and groans that half-resembled words that Ahote couldn't hear. Once they ran off, he continued into the back of the van to find Brandeen with her shirt raised and feeding Cody. He had to pull his eyes away from the topless Brandeen over to see Joeby in a proper respirator like hers, sitting in his sleeping back with a cable running from his temple data-jack to the custom cyberdeck on his lap.

"Hey, the lights on, Joeby?" he asked while closing the doors and curtain behind him.

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I'm still here. What's up?"

"I was about to ask you that."

"Oh. I'm checking...uh...checking out Vic. I'm trying to find out what I can on him. Personal account data, family associations, maybe some juicy blackmail material; the usual drek."

"Hm...alright. Keep my updated when you find anythin'," he said while stepping over him, passed Brandeen, and began climbing into the driver's seat. "Hey, you got any snacks in here?" he asked as he unbunched his trodes once more. "Apparently the plague out there is pretty contagious," he turned his head back to her. "Hey, how'd you avoid getting infected, exactly?"

"I never left my house if I didn't have to. My pimp's gang brought me everything, and the only people I touched were my clients."

"Ah, alright. Well, it looks like we're on lockdown for the next few days," he said while adjusting the trodes to the sides of his head. "I'll see if I can get VR to work. Shake me if you need me. Oh hey, Joeby?"

"No, we didn't keep food in here. Didn't have any to store."

"Well, that's a pain. Alright, like I said...shake me if you need me."

3.

Ahote spent the next day and a half wrestling with Puyallup's terrible matrix VR. He eventually got help from Joeby's antenna array, and managed to enjoy sim-sense movies where he was placed in the first person perspective of the main hero. Slade the Sniper was the best sim-sense action flick he had ever seen, and ran it so many times he was amazed his commlink hadn't exploded yet. He also lived through some of the Neil the Ork Barbarian movies, a few guilty Shui Wu rom-coms, and even decided to load up Noir Confidential to remind him of the PCC. Of course the heavier clouds rolling in corrupted and even crashed his connection, dumping him back to meatspace every couple of hours. His stomach was rumbling, although he knew there was nothing he could've done about it right then. He turned to see what Joeby was up to, only to find him wrapped up in Brandeen's sleeping bag with Cody asleep on a pillow. He shook his head and jacked back in, hoping his place was saved in Slade The Sniper: The Game.

After what felt like several days trapped in there, the boredom became too much, and after the seventh re-run of the same Shui Wu film, Ahote pulled off the trodes to check the time on his commlink. He kept it plugged into Joeby's van and hoped the battery was enough to feed his phone without dying. A quick observation of both revealed neither was in any danger of shutting down, and that it was eleven at night.

"Hey! Joeby!" he called back as he turned, hoping he wasn't zipped in with Brandeen.

"Whoa, what's up?" he responded, lurching forward in his own bag. "Something wrong?"

"I'm getting stir crazy. You got anything on Vic yet?"

"Uh...yeah, hold on," he said as he unzipped himself from the bag and crawled over to the passenger seat, swapping places with the heater.

Joeby was in his boxers and a grey vendingwear t-shirt, his spikey hair a greasy mess that obfuscated the difference between styling gel and natural oil. He pulled his deck up from the back and plugged it into the dash, connecting it to the window's image link. Joeby slid aside the 'curtain' and ran his fingers across the air, driven by an electronic trance, to cast holographic panels onto the front windshield. Interior camera snaps from some time during the day, judging by the incoming sunlight through the tall windows, displayed the minimalist, square interior of a McHugh's fast food joint. The red and white plastic booths along the walls and the wire frame chairs all looked clean, indicating the location was either new or rebuilt recently. Ahote saw several cheap sandwiches wrapped in cheaper tissue paper, and his mouth began watering.

"So I went back through some archived footage at this place in Snohomish, and saw something. Vic comes to this place every other day, as do a bunch of other people. So...I looked at the regulars and did some searching after taking snaps of their faces."

"Sounds like you got some profiling done?"

"Oh yes, yes I did, and I'm quite proud of it," he said with a smirk while pulling up his digital notepad. "This guy here? He's Vincenzo Fratelli, Vic for short, and after scanning the footage, I'm pretty sure he's just a soldier. Usually works security here for his brother, the actual manager," he said as he zoomed in on the rather generic looking human male with short brown hair and a cheap, imitation-luxury suit.

The notepad changed page as the camera shifted to another view, one inside a compact, cubic office. It displayed another human male, one with a bit more of a beer gut and some salt in his hair, but who otherwise looked just like Vic. He wore a finely pressed McHugh's uniform with the red managerial shirt opposed to the typical yellow. He laid limp in a synth-leather chair, with a universal connector cable running from his temple to the cyberterminal on his gunmetal desk.

"Vic's older brother, Franco Fratelli. Kind of a hardass manager, 'got time to lean, got time to clean,' seems to be his personal motto. If I had to guess, this was his front for family operations. Guy used to be in Vic's shoes a decade back, and all I've found makes it sound like he still wishes he was. Now he's mostly jacked in, running the store in the matrix."

The notepad and camera shifted in unison again. This time over to a larger man, looking about as young as Joeby, in the standard red pants and yellow shirt. He was built like the stereotypical mob bruiser, complete with a slouch, although that was more due to his mopping than anything else.

"Demetrio Fratelli. Big guy, dumb as a sack of hammers, probably fried his brain on BTLs. Guy wants to be a soldier too, but people higher up don't think he's got the brain for it. Not much else to say, but he cleans well."

Another shift, this time to a thin man with a glistening oily pompadour hairdo and McHugh's uniform in the cooking area.

"Patrizio Fratelli. One of Vic's cousins. I actually knew this guy before Stooby dragged me along on this job. Guy's a decker too, drains accounts and even does matrix wet-work for the family. I think he's the actual spider in case something goes wrong here with the local host. Frank got him a job here instead of leaving things to auto-cookers and androids like everywhere else, but he does nothing but bitch about it. I actually heard him give Vic this whole spiel about how a mobster should be a badass killing machine, not a cook and computer wiz."

"You're kidding me," Ahote said with a chuckle and a shake of his head.

"Not at all. Guy probably spits in the food."

Beside Patrizio was a young woman in her own cooking uniform, grilling and wrapping krill patties at four times the pace Patrizio was without any of the bitching.

"Who's this?" Ahote asked while poking the window with his meaty pointer finger.

"Gabriella Fratelli, Vic's niece. She got a job for the same reason Patrizio did, although she's much more grateful for it. If anyone leaves a tip here, they're leaving it for her. From what I can tell, she's in the family, but she's not _in the family_."

Ahote nodded.

"Alright. Any more winners here?" he said while spinning his finger in a circle motion around the moderate crowd in the background of the footage.

The camera and notepad shifted yet again to a man with crossed arms standing by the door. Yet another dead-ringer for Vic, this time in a hefty leather jacket filled with layered graphene sheets, painted red and yellow to match the company. Judging by his left hand, he had some cybernetics.

"Luciano Fratelli. Another cousin, another soldier, swaps guard duty with Vic here. Not much to say about him really, just...mob soldier, tough guy, don't piss him off."

"Alright, anyone else?"

Joeby shook his head, then spread out the individual camera recordings and matching note pages across the windshield.

"Nope. That's the Fratelli crew at this place. There's sometimes one or two extra soldiers who come and go, but those are the regulars."

Ahote sighed as he scanned the screen, running the info over in his head, trying to formulate an approach.

"And you guys...you just walked in, and spoke with Vic?"

Joeby nodded.

"Think we could do it again?"

"What, and question him then and there?"

"Mhm."

"Uh...Ahote, man, you might be tough, but I don't think Vic will sell out his client just because you snarled at him."

He turned to Joeby with a wry smile.

"Who said anything about snarling?" he reached down and hit the push-start on the van. "Get your deck ready. We're heading back to my place."

"Wait, what?"

"I need my tools, you guys need a place to stay. You can cover the store from my flat, right?"

"Y-yeah, I guess?"

"Wiz. Let's go."

Ahote couldn't get back on the road fast enough. He was starting to feel tingling in his blood and bones, he knew he would go nuts if he didn't move soon. Being cooped up in an impromptu shelter for two days and some change was headache inducing, and the polluted, debris ridden roads of Puyallup were an oasis of freedom as far as he was concerned. He put the pedal to the floor, accelerating towards his Tacoma flat at full speed, and began to think of how he would break every bone in Vic's body for sending three-and-a-half hitmen to geek a kid.

Potholes, street meat, and debris lightened up as they went up the Puyallup river towards the Tacoma district border. Brandeen and Joeby held their breath, but Ahote knew they weren't in any danger of getting fingered by the pigs and getting cuffs slapped on them. The pawns were paid to stop crimes, not investigate them. Odds are while they were laying low in Puyallup, Knight Errant just scooped some SINless off the street, slapped them with the charges, then considered the case closed, situation dealt with, and job done; Ahote had seen it before. Better them than us, he figured.

The Wilcox Apartment complex in Tacoma was a compact tower district constructed from industrial metals and plascrete, uniform in every way down to the last room of the last tower. They each sported the same pool, the same indoor gym, the same lobby-lounge combo, the same vendingwear-clad occupants with almost identical jackrabbit cars. Ahote was one of the wealthier residents it appeared, with a few articles of seventh hand thrift shop clothes. His flat was near the top of his tower, and on the way up they passed a cleaning android washing away this week's batch of graffiti tags. He slid his resident ID card then hunched through the doorway.

Ahote's flat was too cramped and human-sized for someone like Ahote to fit into it comfortably. He had a living room with a couch, table, and tv-stand, then a kitchen and bathroom. The couch folded out into a bed, and it looked like Veronica was using it. Her eyes were half open when he lumbered in, Brandeen, Joeby, and a sleeping Cody following, and she quickly curled up and held the heavy blanket close to her chest.

"Ahote? Where the hell have you been? Who are these people?" she demanded in a half surprised, half asleep voice.

"Business partners. Have you been here the whole time?"

Veronica nodded. Behind Ahote, Brandeen and Joeby took seats at the slim counter that divided the main room from the kitchen.

"Yeah I...uh…" she rubbed her eyes. "Vern's place got cleared out. I got a call a few minutes after I called you; Vern's dead, and Aztechnology recovered his home and assets to go to another employee."

"What? Not you?"

She shook her head.

"I don't have their loyalty program benefits like he did. If he's not living there, I can't either. And I...I can't afford a normal apartment, not without Aztechnology's help."

"And that's a part of the loyalty deal…" Ahote sighed.

She nodded again.

"I'm sorry, I just-"

"Null sweat, omae. Stay as long as you need. I hope you don't mind the sheets; they're meant for the coarser skinned gentleman."

"They're fine. They're better than nothing."

Veronica rolled over and presumably went back to sleep. Ahote joined the others over on stools at the counter in what quickly became an awkward silence. Cody was asleep, and Brandeen was more focused on keeping him that way than anything else right then. Joeby twiddled his fingers while leaning in on the grime and tile countertop, trying to avoid the elephant in the room, and Ahote thought about rushing over to the sink and puking. Vern couldn't be dead, he was a gold DocWagon subscriber. He took a blow to head, and they were on the scene quickly, he assumed anyway since it was DocWagon, and yet they couldn't save him. He could have, he thought. He could have pulled him to the back with Veronica and wrapped some gauze around his head wound, or given him some painkillers. Okay maybe that wouldn't have worked, surely DocWagon did those things, but he could have done something, and yet he didn't. He put a fist in front of his lips as he struggled to supress what felt like a wave of vomit. At least in the end, he managed to save the girls, Cody, and himself. That thought helped ease the icy stab he felt in his stomach.

"Ahote?" Brandeen asked while nudging his shoulder.

"Hm? What?" he responded, clearing his throat in the process.

"I asked you what the plan was. We're here now, we're probably safe for now, so what is the plan?"

"Well," he coughed again to clear his throat once more. "We uh...Joeby and I go find Vic. We get him to help us find George Hampton, then I'll make sure one way or another George backs off your hoop. While doing that, Joeby and I can see what kind of yerz we can scratch off Georgie boy."

"That's...hopeful," she responded in a low, flat voice as not to wake Cody. "You think you can make him listen?"

"I don't know. I do know I can get him off your hoop one way or another. And then you can use whatever we scrape off of him to go off and raise Cody here," he turned to Joeby. "You and me...we can enjoy a phat payday."

Joeby nodded.

"Not like I have much of a choice," he groaned while rubbing his temples.

"Ahote," Brandeen began. "Why are you doing this?" she shot him a quizzical, cynical look, judging and on guard.

He shrugged.

"You needed my help, and it seemed like the right thing to do, helping a poor mama and her baby. Besides, I might turn a profit at the end of this."

"Somehow I doubt that," she hissed.

"What? You don't think George is loaded?"

"I don't think you did this out of the kindness of your heart."

Ahote sighed.

"Suit yourself. Joeby, you good for this gig?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "Sounds like I might actually get out of the barrens."

"Mhm. Hey, sorry about...uh…"

"I know. Like you said, dog-eat-dog; nothing personal. Brandy and I got past it."

"Right, nothing personal," he shook his head, then stood from the counter, almost hitting the ceiling with his head. "Look, I say we sleep here and take care of this mess tomorrow. We can set up a pallet for you guys with some spare blankets; again, they're not exactly the softest kind, but they'll keep you warm."

"Wiz, man," Joeby replied, and Brandeen followed with a silent thumbs up of her own.

That night they drank grey water from the fosit, but there wasn't any food in Ahote's fridge, so no dinner. Brandeen slept beside the table, pushed out of the way, with Cody wrapped up ontop of it. Joeby made do with the kitchen tile floor. Ahote shared the bed with Veronica, and he barely got any sleep as he spent most of the night worrying about rolling over ontop of her by accident. He also tried to ignore the fact that a nude women was in his bed. Veronica had only the Stuffer Shack uniform left to her name after Vern's place got cleared out, and she tried to make it last by keeping it neat and folded on the table. With Ahote back, she could hopefully brave the journey into the main complex lot and pick out some vendingwear in her size.

Brandeen woke up around three to feed Cody when he began crying, and Veronica buried her face in Ahote's chest to try and ignore it. He put a hand on the back of her head, ran his fingers down her flaxen curls to her neck and back, and began to wonder if that was so inappropriate. Vern's dead, that made Veronica single, and Ghost did Ahote feel like an ass for thinking that. She felt nice to hold close, and any feelings of guilt were quickly pushed aside by warmth and tiredness. She didn't seem to mind him wrapping an arm around her, and moments before finally drifting off, he heard her stomach growling like his. His dreams turned to nightmares, images of Veronica and the others withering away in pools of filth, coughing up blood like those plague victims in Puyallup. Any fantasies of being with Veronica were dashed by the knowledge that he wouldn't be able to stay in the same home as her, sleep with her, give her a happy life, and there she would be on the street corner, plague and starvation in a race to claim her. Suddenly, Cody's waking cries became more of a blessing than a curse.

Ahote left his trenchcoat, cargos, and boots in his flat in exchange for a full suite of vendingwear garments in dirt brown and his trode mesh. He concealed a slip of green plastic in one pocket and a ceramic/plasteel knife in the other on his way down to the central plaza. The morning sky wasn't much of an improvement over Puyallup, dark silver with sleet downpour, although here there was less of a chance of the air itself killing you. He passed a few SINless beggars on the way down, and saw a few being run off by Knight Errant anthro-drones with stun batons. In the plaza there was an Omni-Product vending machine, a large automated ordering stand that could keep the population here happy as long as it was stocked. On the side of the machine was a sign that read 'Keep The Change. Don't Support Panhandling. Give Your Money To A Good Cause,' and beneath it was an Aztechnology-StufferShack logo.

He slot the green credstick and ordered up several sets of vendingwear for himself, Brandeen, Joeby, and Veronica; Cody had plenty of baby clothes in Brandeen's purse. He ordered a proper respirator as well to cover his face with, his last one got smashed and Brandeen's was really only short term. Lastly, he picked up some silver wrapped packets of nutrisoy paste bars. He carried everything in a pile in his arms with his knife in hand, concealed beneath the mound of plastic fabrics and wrapped up food. His eyes darted side to side, he turned back and forth, scanning for any of the bums in the area who might be getting ideas. When he reached the damp cobblestone steps going up, his vision was stolen by a blinding neon red holo-panel. A Renraku Neo-PD alert, letting him know he was fifty-seven percent likely to commit assault, and was advised to return home and check in with Neo-PD to lower his profile status. What the hell was this?

Ahote quickly jogged back to his flat and deposited the goods on the kitchen counter. Everyone got changed into some thankfully clean, if a little uncomfortable, clothes. No one had any room to complain, and they were just happy to have something else to put into their bellies. The paste product and grey water from the faucet combined to leave a feeling like icy rocks were sitting inside their stomachs, about to rip through their bellies from the weight. Veronica and Joeby treated the pain with nanohi, and judging by the amount of empty plastic capsules in the trash, they were burning through his stash quickly. At least it appeared they were only getting at the nanohi, and nothing else.

Slade the Sniper: The Horizon Series played on the flatvid as they lounged around a bit longer than they would like to admit. They knew Vic wouldn't be at McHugh's for a while, and Ahote alternated between watching the screen and dragging duffle-bags out from the hidden compartment in the wall. The couch was collapsed and the table back in place, a support for him to withdraw an arrangement of Krime weaponry from his bags. Along with several firearms fit for a troll, he placed a large Cavalier Deputy heavy revolver beside them. He began cleaning the guns with cheap oil, water, and toilet paper while streaming his favorite show in the background. Brandeen put Cody's baby respirator on to protect him from the scent of the cleaning oil, and sat on a counter stool to watch the screen. Joeby was there with Brandeen, alternating in and out of VR, although he didn't say why or what he was up to. Veronica was just happy to be there, enjoying the show, the high, and leaning against Ahote.

4.

The clock rounded ten when Ahote stood and got ready. He replaced the vendingwear crocks with his boots, pulled his cargos on over his proper pants for the added warmth, protection, and pocket space, then put his blue, sleeveless trenchcoat ontop of his dirt colored shirt. He kept his trode net connected, affixed his respirator to his face once more, and carried his duffle bags down to Joeby's van, rattling and clanking all the way down. He loaded everything in the back, along with one of the silver wrapper, torn open cleanly at the top, that contained several poppers. He put a large pair of thick rimmed, black sunglasses that displayed dancing, shifting neon designs on the lenses, visible only from the outside and synchronized them to his trodes, then to his commlink, forming his personal area network. From the inside, his sunglasses displayed a proper AR overlay, complete with the annoying emerald tint that was inescapable in the Seattle metroplex. Lastly was a dirty, Ares 5.11 backpack that held the remainder of his 'working gear', save for the crowbar which he just laid on a seat in the back. He put his ceramic/plasteel knife in the folds of his trench, along with his Cavalier Deputy and Krime Spree, then sealed the back doors and jandered around to the driver's seat. He put the Remington 990 in the passenger seat, buckled in, then began a neural-call to Joeby.

"Hey omae," Ahote began. "How're things lookin' on your end?"

"Not bad. I got eyes on Vic; he literally just walked in, so you might want to haul your hoop up there."

"Alright," he thought while starting the electric engine and peeling out into the road towards Redmond. "I'll take the speedway."

The van was pretty fast with the pedal to the metal, at least it seemed that way; Ahote was used to biking. In reality, the van's top speed was just under a hundred kilometers per hour. It rattled down the street, swaying heavily during tights turns and short drifts around corners. He blew off more than one stop sign, ran more than one red light, ploughed through more than one Jackrabbit, and left his share of street meat behind when sidewalks proved easier roads than the plascrete. Like Tacoma-Puyallup, Renton-Redmond was an obvious decline in quality and municipal maintenance. The streets were falling apart, filled with potholes and dilapidated buildings up and down each road. Gang tags covered every surface, there was no public AR to speak of, and radiation warnings flew in the wind. He saw critters dragging away metahumans for food, and shootings could be heard in every direction. The Redmond barrens were a radioactive wasteland crashing into a total warzone, slammed in with an anarcho-flux state, and drowned in urban squalor. Plagues, gang violence, ruined cities, all were present and accounted for, although the difference between Puyallup and Redmond was apathetic entropy and malicious ruination.

The lack of speed limits or road signs let him screech down the road, battering any obstructions out of his way in the surprisingly durable tank of a van. He had to use the windshield wipers to get rid of blood and grey matter from hostile gangers and carnivorous critters caught on his hood. Every block seemed to grant new bullet dents in the side of van as he cruised through the crossfire between countless gangs. Drugged up lunatics with shotguns, cyborgs with automatic weapons, dwarves with too many explosives, ghouls with sinister mojo, and even the odd Knight Errant heavy combat team could be seen on his path through the barrens.

The high anxiety cruise brought him in the path of a pawn shop during some kind of explosion. A muck filled cloud of orange and brown shot outwards with an ear blistering boom, sending billows of smoke upwards and piles of grime out into the road. He swerved past the immediate wreckage and almost went nose-first into a wheeless Westwind being picked clean by some ganger kids. He swerved back, and discovered that he side-swiped another large van obfuscated by the smoke. He saw the purple and orange paint job, the jack o'lantern stencil, the flaming top, the screaming psychos firing off pistols out of the back, and immediately reached for the 990. The Halloweeners sped ahead and the gangers in the back fired, blowing out Ahote's windshield as he raised the Remington, barrel leveled in their direction. He squeezed, braced himself for the stock-kick, then heard a barely audible click. Drek.

Ahote ducked down, dropping the Remington, as a wave of pistol rounds ripped through the driver and passenger seats. He felt the van swerve, barely controlling it with one hand on the wheel, and used his free hand to reach for his Krime Spree. He eyed the four in the back, two ork guys, a human teen, and an elf chick, all in Halloweener rags with Halloweener ink. His sunglasses' AR display cleared, replaced by a pixel-looking series of boxes. Thirty-out-of-thirty, an 'X' crosshair, lock-on system, info-feed on what he was locking on to, status indicator, everything from his Krime Spree's attached smart-gun system. He raised the SMG, marked his targets, then opened fire left to right, tanking pistol rounds to his chest and arm in the exchange. The bodies went limp, two fell out and rolled under Ahote's wheels, and the Halloweener van peeled off at an intersection out of the way. He set the Spree down in the seat beside him, and worked on pulling the bullets and glass out of his arm. Thankfully, the mayhem seemed to remain behind him, and he passed Touristville at the forty-five-minute mark. Continuing through the building up slush, he found himself speeding through the Redmond-Snohomish border at an hour on the road.

"Joeby?" he began another neural call once he was back on a stable grid.

"Hey, you're back; out of Redmond?"

"Yeah, what about Vic?"

"Well...let me see," there was a long gap before he spoke again. "Uh...he's still there. Looks like he's just been chatting with the family."

"Wiz. I'll be there in five."

Snohomish met Ahote with every stereotype of the breadbasket district that he could imagine. The road took him between razor-wired soy farms, guarded by armed Eagle Security agents who regarded him with some suspicion. He checked his AR and received another notification from the Neo-PD, an alert that his profile had risen to seventy-percent after leaving Redmond, and he would be detained in three hours if he didn't lower his profile rating; how one does that wasn't stated, and he had no clue. The security agents didn't stop him though, they weren't Renraku or Neo-PD, so his profile rating didn't matter to them.

There was a pair of what-appeared-to-be new ag-facilities under construction by the Takai Development Corporation, under Sakura Security guard. Small time green houses paled in size and stature to the colossal ag-facilities of Aztechnology, Saeder-Krupp, Ares, and Shiawase. Each facility had a neat road going up to various ultramodern estates in the green countryside hills.

The main road split into several smaller towns that looked more like higher-end retirement plazas than residential suburbs. There was a moment of dissonance on the route to the McHugh's when he looked around the elderly, wealthy town of brick and mortar buildings, antique laden hubs, and old style downtown main streets. He saw not one blue hair across the entire plaza. The kind of old rich people who could afford to live in Snohomish' residential areas could also afford to buy off old age through rejuvenation treatments and G3 intake. When he rolled into smelling range of the diner, he wondered if there was a treatment or magic great enough to counteract the damage McHugh's food does to one's system.

The Krime Spree fit into the glove compartment with ease, his knife and revolver were easy to hide in his coat, and Ahote took a deep breath as he parked across the street from the McHugh's. The battery was humming, the floor felt hot, the frame rumbled still, and he looked through the windows to see Vic, his crew, and some other bystanders inside.

"Joeby, I'm here," he thought out to his partner. "You still in?"

"I am now. I'll check for alarms in case Vic tries to snitch on you for walking in," there was another pause as Joeby eased into the matrix. "Hey...Ahote? You know you got a Neo-PD profile, right?"

"Yeah, I've been seeing that. Anything you can do?"

"I uh...I'm not sure, I've never had one before; never tried to edit an NPD profile."

"Well, figure it out ASAP. I'm going in."

Ahote opened the door, locked it behind him, then quickly jogged across the black-slush stained streets, slid across the blind-ice sidewalk, and caught one of the frost coated handles of the front double-doors. Despite the intake of soy paste earlier, the aroma of krill patties made his stomach implode with a sense of desire. McHugh's has never served real, authentic food in its entire history. Ordering anything on the menu inevitably ends up in sadness and regret. Whoever makes all this stuff should probably be charged with violating a dozen different environmental laws and health hazards. Still, he knew it was so good despite being so terrible, and the smell inside masked the absent or even foul flavor of many of the dishes. The front counter was guarded by a life sized clown animatronic, and it was probably better at running off would-be stick-up kids than Lucy was.

The lobby is like every other McHugh's in existence: large, faux-clay floor tiles and wide open seating. Customer seating consists of macroplast tabletops and wire frame metal chairs that would collapse under his weight. Demetrio was there, mopping up a spilled shake in one corner. The front counter featured an interactive console where customers could make their orders by speaking or pushing the appropriate buttons. Most prefered the buttons, since the voice recognition tends to screw up orders, although the touch screen looked like a petri dish of every germ and grime substance in the sprawl. Bizarrely, the food prep area was relatively open, with a corner of the store cut off for it, but still open for people to walk in and out of. The floor was glistening, although not from Demetrio's cleaning job, but from years worth of calcified grease that had built up. Ahote guessed the kitchen floor was not his responsibility. Patrizio and Gabriella were there. Gabriella was working over soy and krill patties on the auto-grill, instantly cooking shaped patties with an electric jolt and then adding the grill-lines later on the hot slab with a spatula. She quickly put them on buns, added spread, then wrapped them in tissue paper. Pat was absentmindedly working on several humming machines, the first being an industrial slicer that he pressed down on whole potatoes. The shredded raw fries fell into the waist-high fryer vats below, filled with bubbling, synthetic fry-oil. Gabriella turned and said something in, Ahote presumed, Italian, which caused Pat to pull onion and tomato substitute from the chilled cabinets below and place them in a large tub of saline solution to rehydrate them. The humming noises, bubbling sounds, grey colors, and visible transitions of food from shaped, dried lumps to actual meals seemed somewhat surgical to Ahote, and almost killed his appetite. Almost.

Ahote approached the order screen and punched in an order for five Kriller Deluxe burgers, krill patties with cheese and pickle substitute. He added tomatoes and lettuce to each, made them both double burgers, then had to punch in his account info. His SIN, the one he broadcasted anyway, didn't have an account. Ahote didn't have a real one of his own either, so he lucked out with a credstick slot beneath the ordering screen. He turned around while waiting for his sandwiches to come down the counter, sizing up the crowd. Immediately apparent was the makeup of the patrons inside; Ahote was the only troll in the building, and aside from one ork sitting behind a stack of books, tablets, a deskmaster portable cyberterminal, and a leaning tower of soda cups, the entire ensemble was human. His clothing also made him stand out like a sore thumb, and he didn't need the half hidden half stares to notice. Families were together, everyone had on jeans and sweaters, long sleeve coats, and other forms of designer winter-wear. He just brushed them off while waiting for his burgers, formulating his approach to Vic in his head.

Ahote got his burgers and found a seat at one of the booths against the window wall. He had to push out the table to squeeze in there, and his weight almost pulled the plastic bench seat out of its fastenings, however it held long enough for him to enjoy his burgers, and the subsequent feeling of dry rocks piling up in his stomach. He glanced across at Vic as he ate, his eyes glazed over with faint flickering colors indicating a fluttering AR overlay. After a few minutes of finishing off his meal and working over lame sounding approaches, Ahote said 'frag it', stood from the booth, and swaggered over to Vic's table. The mobster didn't seem to notice the gigantic, jacked troll until he was snapping his fingers at him.

"Hey, Vic," he hissed at him.

"What do you want trog?" he quickly snapped back.

"Hampton. I know you sent some goons after his girl."

Vic's eyes widened at that, the color ran away from his face along with the attitude, and Ahote just knew he was sending a direct neural message to Lucy for backup.

"Don't try anything funny, Vic."

"Or what?" he mumbled back with an uneven voice and forced smile. "You'll...you'll eat my head? That's what you do, right?"

"Mhm. Something like that."

"I don't think so, trog," another voice came from behind, along with the telltale pressure of an Ares Predator V in his lower back. "Let's yous and me take a walk outside and leave the boss alone, what do you say?"

"I say you better got some explosive military drek loaded, or you're just wasting lead."

"Damn, trog," Vic began, still more nervous than we wanted to appear. "Did you really think I'd just...give you something?" he said while throwing his hands to his sides with a 'ta-da' motion.

"Yeah, I kind of did. You look like a man with a vested interest in living."

"Sure, now get out of here, punk. Lucy," he concluded with a hand wave.

Ahote nodded, turned, and began walking away quietly. Behind him, he heard Vic mutter about him, saying 'I knew he was spineless, see?' and other affirmations of his own toughness to his boys. He didn't mind, he just didn't want to cause a panic. The McHugh's seemed to let out a collective exhale as Lucy escorted him out the front door.

"Ghost Ahote, what was that?" Joeby thought to him.

"Diplomacy. It failed."

Ahote sauntered back across the street, withdrew his meta-link along the way, and entered the user settings to disable his broadcasting fake SIN. That conjured up another flaring alert message from the Neo-PD, raising his profile to ninety-nine percent, and warning him that the authorities were on their way to detain him before he did one of several possible crimes on a list. He knew he had maybe twenty minutes.

Time enough.

Ahote went to the back of the van, opened the door, and dragged one of his duffel bags to the lip of the floor. He withdrew a long, jingling chain of brass bullets, then strapped the bandolier across his chest from right shoulder and left hip. Next he reached for a bulky gun that straddled the line between assault rifle and light machine gun, belt fed, smart-gun equipped, and sporting a custom mold grip for his personal use. He reached into the recycled silver baggie and pulled out a kamikaze popper, a military grade combat stim and a street thug's best friend. He put the mouth to his lips, crushed the bulb, then felt a cool surge to his lungs that grew out to a wave across his body, and his eyes dilated wide behind his sunglasses.

Ahote sauntered back to the front door, letting his arms hang at his side, swinging the Krime Happiness as he went. When he reached the front doors, he drove the sole of his boot in the meeting space between the two, shattering the glass in both and forcing them to slam open against the tiled walls. He lifted the Happiness, leveled it from his hip towards Lucy, and fired off a long succession of warning shots for the others directly into his back, forcing him to the ground in a pool of red as mulched gore splattered across the back windows of the restaurant.

"Everybody on the ground!" he roared while turning the barrel over to Demetrio.

Vic's head was below the firing line of the fanning auto-rifle, sparing him as bullets howled by. Demetrio wasn't so lucky, and fell into the freshly cleaned corner in the same fashion that Luciano did with the windows. A disheveled man pushed his young daughter to the ground as he pushed himself up from his seat. Using his other hand, the man reached for something in his jacket, although a triplet of rifle rounds tore through his chest, dropping him limply back to his seat, as the barrel moved towards the kitchen area. Pat managed to pull a streetline special from his back pocket and pop off a single shot in defiance before a torrent of incoming rounds flung him against the cooking machinery with enough force to dent the fryer vats and rattle the slicer, spilling shredded hunks of meat into both. Gabriella, like the majority of the people inside, collapsed at the warning shots, and screamed, holding her ears, as the bullet trail continued towards the door of the manager's office. Violence spat out through the smoking barrel, shredding the shoddy door and mincing Frank from the waist up before he even escaped the office. Shattered windows across two walls made great exit ports for the fleeing customers, leaving plenty of room for Ahote to amble over to Vic as he cowered and sniveled, a spineless slug of a man, into his blood splattered seat.

Vic mumbled something that Ahote couldn't quite hear through the red mist as he gripped him by the collar and dragged him, kicking and screaming impotently, along the slick tile. He checked his AR for a PanicButtom alert and saw that beyond his existing Neo-PD profile, he wasn't the subject of any pig interventions. Looked like Joeby did his job. He yanked Vic along, reaching the fryer vats where Gabriella was cowering in an almost identical, spineless pile of misery and tears. Ahote dropped Vic, a ragdoll on the grease, and proceeded to take his right wrist, almost ripping his arm off when placing the hand inside the slicer. Vic begged silently, shaking his head as life began to slowly return to him, and Ahote used the stock to press down the slicer. Vic shrieked in agony as his digits and a set of hand bone fires fell cleanly through the press into the vats below.

"Hampton! Now! Or I'll feed your whole body to this thing!" Ahote shouted down into Vic's sweat coated face through his respirator.

"The freezer! She's in the freezer! Oh Ghost, please! Let me go!"

He snorted, brought up Vic's other hand, and repeated the slicing process. Vic repeated the shrieking. Ahote dropped him and watched him roll in pain, wanting to clutch with stumps with hands he didn't have. For a slug who had no problems ordering the death of a kid, Ahote thought he was being very merciful and restrained. He wasn't feeding Vic in his entirety to the slicer after all. Ghost, what he'll do to Hampton once he rips him out of the…freezer? Wait, what? And did Vic say 'she'? Ahote looked down, his eyes trailing off in thought, then his attention was snapped back to his immediate present by a pair of small bullets punching his chest, fired from Pat's streetline special, held in Gabriella's shaking hands. He turned, glared at her from behind his thick shades as she emptied the rest of the bullets into him, and shifted his lens display to a pair of matching orange smiling faces made of retro-pixel art, complete with 'Have A Nice Day,' beneath each smiley.

"No…no…please," she murmured while dropping the small pistol then collapsing to her knees over her uncle.

Ahote didn't want to kill her. She wasn't in the family, like Joeby said, but there she was trying to kill him. True, he's had more damaging encounters with bug bites, and he could just shrug her off and leave, but what next? She goes back to her family and tells them what happened, who did it? Joeby can wipe cameras, spoof alarms, but only a bullet through the skull could erase human footage. He readied the Happiness and pointed the barrel roughly at head level with the kneeling woman. She put up her hands, tears streaming down her red cheeks, without even an attempt at keeping her cool.

"Please, please don't! I'll suck your d-"

Her please were cut off by a tight grouping of rounds through her face, out onto the rehydrator's slick body. A twinge struck Ahote's chest, although he couldn't quite say of what. She did try and kill him after all, the best thing he figured he could do was make it painless.

"Aw, man…" Vic whined in a surprisingly calm tone, like he just spilled soda or something and was mildly inconvenienced by it. "Why'd you have to go and do that?"

Ahote turned back, thought of what to do with him, and decided to put a hand on the lip of the fryer vat. With a single jerk, he ripped the vat free from the wall and spilled the bubbling oil over the floor, coating Vic head to toe on the way down. He shrieked again as the burns and boiling set in, Ahote's boots spared him any damage. He strolled through the now eerily silent McHugh's, over to the freezer. The large metal door was just behind the ordering counter and opened with a simple thumb-level handle.

The door lisped when pulled, hinged wailed, and a thick plume of white mist poured out to meet the above-freezing air. Inside were wall-wrapping shelving units, each supporting what must have been two-hundred or so packs of shaped krill, soy, algae, and numerous synthetic substitute burger products, all wrapped in frost flaking, transparent sacks. One of which was broken open on the floor, soy patties strewn about a pool of red that originated at the depressed skull of some other guy in winter wear, another Fratelli if the family resemblance was any metric to go by. Behind the collapsed man, up against the wall, was a cowering elf woman with a voluptuous build, deep brown eyes, and a shaved head. She didn't have any clothes, leaving the stark white skin and splotches of blueish-grey to be visible. His eyes wandered from hers to sterling silver piercings through her nipples that further led his gaze to a long pink line up her left side, going along her ribs and up to her arm-pit. Following the line down led him to a second one along her left hip, and he could tell they were taking spare parts from her.

He scanned her up and down, both with his eyes and with his sunglasses' image link. Some basic headware, and lack clinic work, no registration, meaning she was probably SINless. She would be hot as hell if she didn't look so disturbing, and Ahote felt a strange mix of arousal and shame at the presence of it. He reached up and unlatched the bandolier at his shoulder, clearing the way for him to pull off his trenchcoat and throw it over her like a large towel.

"Ghost, lady," he whispered to her. "Damnit…uh…" his mind raced, throwing any thoughts of Hampton out the window as he tried to think of what to do with her. "Are you okay?" dumb question, but a good start.

Her jaw shook, her teeth chattered, her limbs shuddered, and she sunk into the rough fabric of Ahote's coat. He threw the bandolier over his shoulder, slung the Happiness over the other, and carried the woman out with one arm under her back and the other beneath her legs. He quickly jogged out into the street with her, sirens in the distance, and cursed to himself as he haphazardly deposited her into the passenger seat, then tossed his equipment in the back. He kicked on the engine and peeled away from the spot as quick as he possibly could, chucking a U-turn and burning rubber back to Redmond where he was pretty sure the fuzz wouldn't follow.

"Joeby, you there?" he thought through his trodes. "We got a new problem, omae. You know a chop-shop in Redmond?"

No reply. Ahote checked his AR display to see if he was still connected to Joeby, and discovered he was alone in the neural chat. Great, just great. Ahote hurtled back into the barrens as fast as he could, drawing the ire of a Knight Errant patrol vehicle for numerous traffic violations along the way. Although with no SIN showing and no intention of stopping, the barrens provided a clean get-away. He reached over and nudged the lady, half-awake in her seat.

"Lady, where'd you get that work done?"

She didn't say anything, not for lack of trying, but her facial expression of confusion was the only thing Ahote could really understand while tearing through pocked streets and through crossfires yet again.

"Your 'ware, sister. Where'd you get it done? I don't know any doctors out here in Redmond."

"M-m-m…" she grunted out strange sounds through her quivering jaw, then lurched forward to expel vomit onto the floor. "Holistic Healthcare. South Renton, not Redmond."

A black clinic in Renton? Sounds like it's near the Tacoma border, or Auburn. He made sense of it in his head, Holistic Healthcare sounded like an actual hospital, so maybe there's just a doc working on the side for some extra cred. Given how everyone in Tacoma seems to be affiliated with one crime syndicate or another, it wouldn't surprise him. He course corrected, although had to do a few circles until he found another van of the same model in a parking lot somewhere where he could hijack the plates before going back to a civilized part of the sprawl. A short term solution, but that's all he needed at the moment.

"Who are you?" he asked as he began the route to Renton proper. "You got a name, sis?"

"M-Moxi," she coughed, expelling another, smaller amount of vomit to the floor.

"Moxi…Hampton?"

She nodded.

"Did my father put you up to this?" she groaned, trying to clear her throat.

Ahote sighed silently and shook his head.

"Not exactly."

She cocked her head when turning to face him.

"Wait, really? So you're…just another armed lunatic?"

"That's about right, yeah. I'm looking for your father, actually."

She let out a single chuckle.

"If you want the reward money, he'll be at Holistic Healthcare. He's the boss there, you know."

Great. Ahote wondered though how she didn't have any of her 'ware registered. Sure, maybe she wasn't broadcasting a SIN because the Fratelli's shut it off and she didn't even have a commlink to broadcast from, but it still didn't make sense that her 'ware didn't come up in AR as belonging to 'Moxi Hampton'. Still, now he had a lead to go off, and punched the Holistic Healthcare, Renton, into his GPS. Turns out there was only one in the sprawl, and Ahote sped there as quickly as he could. With his Neo-PD profile flaring bright at one-hundred percent, he didn't bother turning his fake SIN back on, he just hoped the new plates would be enough to throw off anyone who marked the van leaving Snohomish.

5.

The pawns in Renton were either thrown off by the plates as planned, or just didn't notice or care about his traffic violations before. He passed suburban and apartment complexes in rows, Seattle's apartment was a well-earned moniker, although there seemed to be the usual assortment of gang tags and thug peacocking as everywhere else, no matter what the pawns tried. He actually ended up pulling up one street that supposedly took him right to the clinic, one that was surprisingly clean and well-maintained for what one would expect from the average living area of the sprawl. When he passed bikers in red and white with the red cross on white banners, he understood why gangs were so terrified to tread there. Up at the end of the road, surrounded by a display moat and synthetic garden, was a cylindrical building dubbed 'Holistic Healthcare'.

The exterior decor was somewhere between calmingly sleek and sterile, stark contrast to the interior which looked like a shaman's bag exploded across the room. Reagents and preparations were on sale in imitation street fashion, carefully placed and prepared to give off the grungy, dirty feeling most people thought of when they heard the word 'street shaman'. When Ahote stepped in, Moxi in hand, he began to see every feature of the lobby was simply another kind of carefully aimed marketing. The receptionist was an elven woman in white slacks and a cotton long sleeve shirt under a pair of crossing leather harness straps that went over her breasts, displaying numerous fetishes, dreamcatchers and reagents along them. Her long blonde hair was swept back beneath this large feather headdress thing, and some strange face paint pattern almost blacked out her features with a dense collection of swirly lines. It was a marketing get-up, and Ahote absolutely loved it. She was a walking middle finger to every stuck up tribal prick who looked down on him for being a troll.

The woman looked at Moxi, wrapped in Ahote's coat and hunched over, and her face elongated with surprise. She blurt out prescripted worries and concerns for the child of one's boss before opening the lift in the room beyond the main lobby. Six floors were identical treatment wards, probably different in the little details that Ahote didn't know or care about, but each looked like the kind of neo-tribal chic designs he was surrounded by in the PCC, an awkward mix of fetishes, tribal design patterns, and clinical sterility, efficiency, and health standards. Floors seven and up dropped the pretense of tribal decor, and their cubicle-farm layouts matched the sterile style of the building's shell. Androids cleaned the walls and floors, and wage-slaves laid limply in office chairs with trode meshes or data-jack cords connecting them to the massive building host to perform their tasks at the speed of thought in virtual reality. Productivity personified by vegetative slobs.

Moxi walked on her own after a point, and led Ahote across the grave-silent cubicle farms. Emaciated wage-slaves wrapped in slacks and button downs made him feel as if he were trespassing on some mass grave. Something about the crushing of carpet underfoot, the low hum of server towers and matrix repeaters, and the walls clean enough to eat off of made him feel uneasy. Neon pink SIN profiles displayed for each body they passed, each a grey colored job title for a grey feeling job. He was on edge after a point as he wondered why she wasn't heading straight to a doctor. She was probably bleeding internally, given organlegger track records, and kept ready to catch her in case of a sudden collapse. Still, she was leading him to George Hampton, so at least she would collapse for a good cause. He wondered along the way if he should tell her about her little brother.

Hampton's office was marked by a large interior wall separating the lifeless cubicle farm on the ninth floor from his pseudo-zen garden chic office. Moxi's palm unlocked the sliding door and gave them a way in. Ahote had to duck and shimmy through the door but still brushed his hair against the frame. The interior was dull blue and grey, with small pools surrounded by polystyrene rocks and filled with holographic fish. A round rosewood desk sat in the middle of the room, flanked by tribal banners Ahote recognized as Hopi. A middle aged man in a grey suit sat in a leather chair with a pair of data-jack cables connecting to a row of cyberterminals across the desk. Moxi stood at the front of the desk, whimpering 'daddy' a few times to lure him out of his digital trance.

"Moxi?" he said as his eyes widened and his mouth fell open. "Oh my god…" he reached up and yanked out the cables.

George stood and reached over the cyberterminals to wrap his arms around her.

"Moxi...Oh god I've missed you so much," he was quiet for a moment before opening his eyes and registering Ahote's presence. "Who're you?"

Moxi pulled back to speak before Ahote opened his mouth.

"This is Ahote. He's the one who saved me from the Fratellis."

George took a few heavy breaths, clearly trying to formulate his thoughts as his eyes darted back and forth across the ground. He exhaled heavily, nodded, and pat Moxi's shoulder.

"Are you okay? What…" he appeared the clear the stage of 'overjoyed' and moved in 'panicked parent'. "Your hair...where are you clothes? Oh...oh no…"

"I'm fine dad. I might need a doctor. They took out my kidney, lung...probably some other things," she said calmly as if she were explaining a boring daily commute. Ahote wondered if she was in shock or on stims.

"Right, of course," he put a finger to his temple to indicate he was making a neural call. "Doctor Marshall will see you on the third floor right away."

Moxi was ushered out of the room quickly by a pair of aides that sped in. George watched her go with a practiced reserve, a composure that came from a corporate career, and then sunk back into his leather chair once his daughter was away. He practically deflated once the door was closed, and Ahote glared at him from behind his shades.

"So...who the hell are you? Some bounty hunter?" he said in a low, harsh tone.

"Something like that. I'm here for Brandeen."

George looked up to meet Ahote's eyes, his brow furrowed slightly.

"Brandeen? You know her?" he shook his head. "Of course you do. Well, what do you want?"

Ahote leaned in on the desk, palms across the surface. He knew George had a neural-activated PanicButton waiting.

"I want you to answer for sending some hitmen after her and her kid. I'm in a good mood after that little family reunion, so I'll cut you a deal. Keep the funds going, and I won't see you again, capiche?"

George reclined into his chair, a wry smile slowly growing across his face.

"I think you're a little behind, kid," he said while reached for a tablet on the desk. "See, my problem with Brandeen has recently been solved. A friend of mine in Knight Errant sent me this," he was swiping his fingers across the screen, then handed the tablet over to Ahote. "Hit play."

The tablet showed helmet camera footage from officer McLeod, Knight Errant rapid response, standing in a standard octet security team. She stood third in line, stacked up against a flimsy door down a grey corridor in some apartment complex. 'Go' flared up in her display, another officer kicked in the door, HK-227 raised, and lead the charge inside. The team breached a compact flat, home to what appeared to be an elf, a dwarf, and an ork. The ork was enduring a seizure on the couch as the dwarf and elf tried to help. The pawns shouted their orders to freeze, hands up, fired a warning shot into the SINless ork wired into the deck. The dwarf threw her hands up, the elf ducked, another officer screamed 'she's going for something!' and McLeod unloaded a rapid succession of six shots into the woman's back. The dwarf had her hands zipped when McLeod turned towards her again, and her incoherent protests were silenced with a stun-baton bash over the back of her head. Joeby executed, Brandeen gunned down, Veronica in cuffs. Ahote felt his stomach turning over, and he plopped down in a chair in front of George's desk.

"Turns out Brandeen was palling around with some console jockey. He pissed off G.O.D., the pawns converged, and a little birdie told me I suddenly had two less problems to deal with," he took the tablet back from Ahote, who looked confused more than anything. "But...hitmen? I didn't send any hitmen after Brandeen. I'm not a monster."

"Bulldrek. Joeby was one of them. I was there when they attacked," Ahote hissed.

"I don't doubt that, but I didn't…" George rubbed his chin, switched tactics. "Who did Joeby work for? Did he say?"

"Vic Fratelli hired him. I spoke to Vic, it's when I found your girl."

"Ah, now I'm starting to understand," he said while shaking his head.

"I'm not. Care to enlighten me? Because caving your skull in is sounding like the only option right now."

"Mister...Ahote," George began, leaned into the desk with folded hands. "See, a man in my position makes many enemies. When I worked for Alliance Designs a few months back, the Fratelli family and I had an understanding. They kept my workplace and sub-offices secure, they received security payments; cheaper than hiring personal security officers for each location, and it fed into their ego of extortion. However, Alliance Designs was recently acquired by Hodag Holdings, and I was transferred here to oversee management of a new series of tribal inspired healthcare centers."

"So you didn't need the Fratelli's security anymore."

"Yes, although that wasn't the catalyst for my problems. See, pay has been slow during the transfer period. Most of my funds have gone towards relocating to our new home, getting my wife the new model of SAAB Gladius she was asking for, not to mention it being the holiday season. I've been thinking of a parting deal with the Fratellis, although they decided to abduct my daughter before I could propose the deal to them. It looks like they...uh…took her..." he put a hand up to his mouth, trying not to choke on his words.

"So you think they heard about your deal with Brandeen, and tried to free up some funds?"

George nodded.

"You're a sharp one. Maybe once she was gone, they could be paid again."

"And now that she's gone, you gonna do a thing about Cody?"

"Well, according to the report I recieved, two adults were killed during the arrest, one subadult, and another adult was arrested. I imagine Cody isn't much of a concern either."

Ahote grit his teeth when he noticed how flatly George talked about a dead kid like that.

"I suppose all clouds have a silver lining. I would've had to have done something about them eventually, couldn't have compromising information like that just running around, you know?"

"That's a kid you're talking about."

"Yes, but not mine. Given our new business associates, I need to keep my sheet clean, surely you understand."

"Hodag not meta-friendly?"

"Oh, not Hodag. I'm talking about Hodag's merger with Saeder Krupp. I couldn't have a blemish on my good name running around, a nuyen leak for the company to deal with. But hey," he managed to smile at Ahote. "Sometimes these things just work out."

Saeder Krupp. The name made Ahote freeze, those two words combined a freeze spell anyone could cast. He wanted to lunge forward and strangle the asshole for making light of a dead kid, his own kid despite what he might think, but those two words might as well have splashed with liquid nitrogen.

"Hey, don't look so glum," George said while withdrawing a strip of gold plastic from his breast pocket. "Here, this is what I'd put together for Moxi's ransom; you've earned it, kid."

Ahote took the credstick slid over to him and scanned it: Fifteen-thousand. Not bad, he figured. The money didn't help the growing nausea though.

"You did good, Ahote," George said with a smile and nod. "You know, with the Fratelli's business with me concluded, I find myself in need of a new...security specialist. You seem capable."

That struck his chest, the base of his heart. He wanted to rob this asshole, not get paid by him. He wanted to beat an apology out of this guy for Brandeen, not be thanked by him for rescuing his daughter. In his mind, he imagined kicking in the doors of the clinic, stomping up to his office, and beating his door down, not all but shaking hands with him. He imagined riding off into Puyallup or Redmond with Joeby and Brandeen, maybe having George do something about the Grey Town plague, but now there he was, and there they were. It was a dog-eat-dog sprawl and he was the last dog standing, and there was George Hampton with an offer to get him out of the squalor of south Tacoma.

"Thanks, George. Let me know next time you got some work that needs done."

S.K. O'Malley

2018


End file.
